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Originally Posted by HarryT
That's like saying "it's OK to ride on a train without buying a ticket" on the grounds that nobody is losing out as a result of you doing so. The train is going to run anyway, so where's the harm?
The fallacy in the argument (and in the analogous eBook argument too) is that if everyone took the same attitude, the train WOULDN'T run, and the book WOULDN'T be published. In both cases, by being a "freeloader" the person concerned is preying on the honest people; the ones one whose behalf the train runs and the books is published.
It's an attitude which cannot be ethically justified, IMHO.
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First, riding a train is not the same is reading a book or listening to music. IP versus service.
Second and most important, IMO most people are honest and honorable if given a chance. The assumption of draconian DRM, which is what is used on ebooks, is that everyone is dishonest and will steal the IP and give it away to the world. I would like to be able to legally share some of my ebooks with close friends and relatives but I'm not legally allowed because I've supposedly purchased a license not a piece of property.
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I've never accepted the contention that illegal sharers are non-buyers. They are just buyers who've found a free ride. If they want a product (be it music, e-books, or anything else), and they find they cannot steal it, they generally will buy it. They rarely just go without. If what you said was true, there would be no industry for anything, because all goods would be stolen, or they wouldn't be bought at all. Therefore they really are costing producers revenue.
(This obviously doesn't cover the people who collect illegal material by the terabyte, just because they can. I'm talking about someone who likes and wants a certain product.)
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Again, my contention is that the vast majority of people are honest and want to fairly compensate the author. There will always be people who want everything for nothing and no DRM, no law will stop them until they get caught. Even then the hardcore pirates will not be deterred by that. Meanwhile, the rest of us are severely penalized by being locked into one hardware device or not being able to read an ebook because that particular DRM is not supported on our device. Or worse being forced to repurchase the same content because the format is not supported. (Mobi DRM on Kindle, AZW on anything but a Kindle, LRF on non-Sony, etc...)
For myself, I will not purchase an ebook that cannot be converted for use on any of my platforms. That means no DRM PDFs... period.
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Look at this from the proper perspective: It's the pirates that are penalizing you, by taking things for free that you had to pay for, and thereby causing protective laws to be written.
You can legislate morality... social morality. And you have to demonstrate to the majority of society, i.e. individuals, that the social morality must take precedence over individual morality. The laws are put in place, not because someone wants to make your life harder, but because someone wants an artist to be paid for their work. That is pro-social, and any individual who wants to deny another individual due compensation for their work is anti-social.
Think about it this way... if the existence of pirates means tough laws to control them, then it's not the laws that are "penalizing" you... it's the pirates. If it weren't for the activities of pirates, there would be no need for laws that "penalize" anybody.
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Yes, the laws penalize me by having to deal with DRM that's locked into a device or DRM that isn't supported by many devices. Or DRM that limits the number of devices and/or personal copies (iTunes etc...)
Once again there will always be pirates, until the pirates can be targeted without seriously inconveniencing me or impinging upon my rights, an honest lawbiding consumer, then DRM is wrong. Especially since most of the ebooks on the Darknet aren't copies of ebooks but scanned and OCRed copies of pbooks that aren't available as ebooks! How the heck does adding DRM to ebooks stop that?
All I want to do is read my legally acquired books, not have to spend hours upon hours searching for tools, learning to use the tools, and then using the tools to make my ebooks portable on my devices.
Harry T and Steve - I admire and respect both of you but this is a subject we'll have to agree to disagree.